[SeattleUte]

I think the answer to the mystery of why people believe in religous creeds is complicated and many faceted. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I don't know if that's literally true. I do know 90%+ of the world lives an unexamined life (at least as Socrates meant that term), and presumably many of them are happy and live fulfilling lives. It's hard for people like myself and many of you, who habitually intellectualize almost everything, to fathom that people don't wrestle with the same questions we do, but most of them don't. They don't even start down that path, and have no compulsion to do so. Maybe it's a defensive, survival mechanism. Anyway, it's just the way they are, whether from birth or because of a combination of hard wiring and environmental factors.

I think most of the general authorities are that way. I remember Steve Benson discussing once how when he met Pres. Kimball he was struck at what a simple, uneducated man he was. I think that's been true of most of the GA's in the Church's history. But it's not just a matter of education or breeding level. I've noted this core personality trait even among people who are not religious and highly intelligent. I have known many non-religious people who were very intelligent and just didn't find it rewarding--in fact often they found it irritating or painful--to delve into any kind of metaphysics. Tolstoy discusses this contrast in comparing the personalities of Pierre and Prince Andrei in War and Peace.

But I think there is something else going on here. I've come to suspect that maybe the most exalted form of religious belief is a state where one realizes that regardless of what may have happened before the big bang, we live in a thoroughly material universe, and there is nothing to allow for events like visitations from immortal beings and promptings of the spirit, but nevertheless, religion is important enough that it must be maintained and nourished. Further, no secular humanist who ever felt a debt to religion has answered the paradox that absent mullahs, there probably would not have been religion. Personally, I am a lover of Western Civilization. I love the three thousand year arc of its history, the core values, the aesthetics, everything. My wife has noted that I'd probably have been happier having been born a European. So I must acknowledge that though I believe Classical civilization is the most vital part of our roots, and I loath religious fundamentalism, if you remove Judaism and Christianity from the mix, our civilization would look a lot different from what it is, and maybe be less attractive. It's speculation, to be sure, but I love our civilization as it is. (People like Christopher Hitchins who don't acknowledge this are as narrow minded as the mullahs, or they just want to sell books.) (I probably also would not have been born absent Christiantity.)

Let me give you a concrete example of what I'm saying. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was a thoroughly modern, 21st century man. He was a materialist (believed the unversed is made only of material stuff), and an atheist, and he'd figured out atomic theory, natural selection, molecules, of course the cosmos, the earth's subsurface, etc., essentially all basic science. When rediscovered he was tremendously important to the Enlightenment. But he is (unfairly) regarded by popular culture as a hedonist, because he said stuff like: going to war, stressing out about money, trying to become famous or doing something grand, is a silly waste of time, even if you might succeed. The cost-benefit doesn't justify it. He even said have lots of sex, but avoid falling in love or having children, because romantic love and children are too pain inducing and risky on many levels. I think this is in fact what many non-religious people believe today. But would Epicureans have sailed to the New World and settled it? I'm not sure they would even have felt the need to invent the printing press.

I think this is what Einstein meant when he noted in various quotations the inextricable relationship between science and religion.

So this is where I think people like Hugh B. Brown and B.H. Roberts, and many other "devout" but seemingly non-believing Mormons, may have arrived--they realize that we live in a thoroughly material universe, and there is nothing to allow for events like visitations from immortal beings and promptings of the spirit, but nevertheless, religion is important enough that it must be maintained and nourished. Somebody has got to do it, so they will. The motivation to do so obviously becomes compounded when one finds his or her whole career and social network enmeshed with religion, such that to apostatize would be economic and emotional suicide.

This is where I am too, as you see. But Mormon culture simply doesn't suit me. It's matter of taste, really. Probably the primary thing that drives me crazy about it is its blindness to the debt it owes to what came before Joseph Smith; nonsense like condemning the “Hellenization of Christianity.” Mormonism and Christopher Hitchins have a lot in common. This is why all apostasy is ultimately cultural, in my opinion.